The Season You Hire For Too Late

The busy season arrives on the same dates every year. Hiring for it starts in the second week of it, when the shortage is already being felt.

Nobody forgot. The decision simply has no deadline, so it happens when the pressure arrives rather than before.

Why it slips every year

No trigger. ⚠️ The whole mechanism. There is no date on which somebody has to decide, so the decision is made by the first short-staffed night.

The quiet period feels like the wrong time to hire. It is exactly the right time — you have the capacity to train, which you will not have later.

Last year's people are assumed available. ⚠️ Some are and some are not, and nobody has asked. Asking in September about December is free.

The cost feels avoidable. Hiring early means paying earlier. It is a real cost and it is smaller than the alternative, which is a season run short-handed with untrained people.

What being late actually costs

Hiring from a worse pool. ⚠️ Everyone else is hiring at the same moment, and the people who plan ahead have already taken the good candidates.

No time to train. New people learn during the busiest weeks, which is the worst possible teaching environment and produces the worst possible experience for guests.

Your existing team absorbs it. Longer shifts, more of them, during the hardest weeks. Post-season resignations frequently trace back to exactly this.

Turning work away. The quiet cost — bookings you could not take, and they do not appear anywhere.

The three-month view

Ask last year's seasonal staff now. ⚠️ The cheapest hiring you will ever do, and it costs one message.

Count what the season actually needed last year. Hours by week, not an impression. Then add the training weeks in front of it.

Decide the hiring date and put it in the diary. Not "before the season" — a date. Everything else on this list depends on there being one.

Book the training in the quiet weeks. When there is space to do it properly, which is the entire advantage of being early.

The returning staff question

Seasonal people who come back are worth substantially more than new ones — they need no training and they know the room.

Keep in touch out of season. ⚠️ Almost nobody does this, and it is a short message a couple of times a year.

Ask them first, before advertising. It costs nothing and it flatters, which is most of why it works.

Ask why the ones who did not return chose not to. ⚠️ The most useful recruitment information available to you, and it is one question.

After the season

The half that never happens, and it is where next year is won.

Write down what actually happened. ⚠️ How many people, which weeks, what went short. In two weeks it is a vague memory; write it while it is fresh.

Note who you would take back. By name, while you remember clearly.

That note is next year's plan, and producing it takes twenty minutes.

It slips every year for a structural reason

You notice  during the busy month
Which is  the month you have least capacity to act

⚠️ This cannot be fixed by intending to do better, because the intention forms at exactly the moment it cannot be acted on. 　 ⇒ The only fix is a date in a quiet month.

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Three costs, and the invisible one

Fewer people available  everyone hires in the same weeks
Worse terms      lateness is priced in
No time to train    you train on busy nights, badly

⚠️ The third is the largest and the least visible, because from the outside it looks as though you made it in time.

Trained badly is worse than short-staffed

⇒ ⚠️ A person taught during chaos learns the chaotic version, and then teaches it to the next person. One late season can set the standard for two years.

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Work backwards from "trained", not from "hired"

Wrong question  how many people do we need
Right question  when do they need to be able to work alone

⚠️ If they must be independent a month before the peak, you are hiring three months before it, and that date belongs in the calendar now.

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Ask returning staff at the right moment

When they left    "come back any time" — nobody remembers this
Three months before the peak an actual question, with a date

⚠️ Name the month. "Would you be available in November?" gets an answer; "would you ever come back?" does not.

They are the cheapest capacity you can get

⇒ ⚠️ No training, no interview, and they already know the room. 　 　 This one conversation often removes half the problem.

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Write three lines the week after

How many people it actually took
Which nights were short
Who might return

⚠️ Without these, next year starts from memory, and memory in a quiet month does not recall a busy one accurately. 　 ⇒ These three lines are the entire content of next year's 　 　 three-months-out review.

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Three to hold

Weeks of notice before the season that hiring began. ⚠️ Measure it once and the pattern is obvious.

Share of seasonal staff who are returners. Rising means the out-of-season contact is working.

Hours short during the season, by week. The number that sizes next year.

Where the record has to sit

Next year's plan is this year's actual hours, by week, alongside who worked them. If that lives in a finished rota nobody keeps, the planning starts from an impression every single year.

tasteck keeps shifts and staff records together, so a season can be read back rather than remembered.

The season did not arrive early. The decision to staff it has no date, and a decision with no date gets made by whatever happens first.

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Read next

• The Week Before The Big Night
• The Year Has A Shape
• The Costs That Only Appear In Winter
• What The Weather Does To Your Week
• The Thing That Only Happens Once A Year